The Dark Hours (Harry Bosch #23)(66)

“Always,” Schaeffer said.

“No vans?”

“Not a one. Do you want to tell me what’s going on? Is somebody doing some shit and saying he’s with us?”

“I wish I could tell you, Mr. Schaeffer — you’ve been very helpful. But I can’t, and I need you to keep this confidential. Don’t talk about it with anyone.”

“What am I going to tell? I don’t know what’s going on.”

Ballard reached into her pocket for a business card. It had her cell number on it.

“One last thing,” she said. “I need to know about any reported light outages in the Hollywood area for the next two weeks. I don’t care if it’s a weekend or not, I need you to call me as soon as a report comes in that there’s a streetlight out. I don’t need to know about car accidents. Just lights that are burned out, malfunctioning, vandalized, whatever. Can you do that?”

“Of course, not a problem,” Schaeffer said.

“Thank you, sir. When this is all over, I’ll be able to tell you more about it.”

“Whatever it is, I hope you catch the bastard. Especially if he’s the one out there cutting our wires.”

He handed her the printouts with the details of the first two streetlight outages. Ballard thanked him again and left. As she returned to her car, she acknowledged to herself that it was more likely than not that the next report of a vandalized streetlight in Hollywood would come in after it was too late and the next attack had already occurred.

From the work yard, Ballard drove by the exact locations of the streetlights noted on the printouts. In each case, the light where the wiring had been cut was in close proximity to the house where one of the sexual assaults had taken place. It left Ballard with no doubt that the Midnight Men had tampered with the lights before the attacks to further cloak their activities in darkness. She also noticed that in both locations the streetlights were different from the glass acorns in the Dell.

She called SID and requested that a print tech come out and process the access plate at the base of the light on Vista, as well as the light up on Deep Dell Terrace. It was a long shot but Ballard knew that long shots never paid off if you didn’t take them. A fingerprint could change the trajectory of the investigation in an instant. She left the Lucerne address off the request because that light had already been repaired and any fingerprint evidence left by the Midnight Men would likely be gone.

She checked her phone and saw that it was almost eight and her lieutenant should be in his office by the time she got back.

Along the way, she took a call from an autopsy coordinator at the County Medical Examiner’s Office. With more than a thousand autopsies conducted a week, the coroner needed a coordinator just to set the schedule and make notifications to investigators and families of the dead. She was informed that the autopsy of Javier Raffa was set for 11 a.m. with deputy medical examiner Dr. Steven Zvader.

Ballard said she would be there.

Lieutenant Robinson-Reynolds was behind his desk when Ballard got back to the detective bureau. Ballard knocked on the window next to his open door and he signaled her in.

“Ballard,” he said. “I thought maybe you’d already gone home. How’s the head?”

“I’m good,” Ballard said. “I was just out doing an interview on the Midnight Men thing.”

“You need to fill out an IOD.”

“I’m okay, L-T.”

“Look, you want to get paid for Saturday night when you went home early? Fill out the form.”

Ballard knew that filling out an Injured On Duty form would take the better part of an hour and its only purpose was to serve as a record of injuries in case the officer later took action against the department or sought an early retirement due to injury. The city would not cover or accept any financial or retirement request based on injuries not detailed in the IOD form. It didn’t matter that some injuries became an issue long after they initially occurred. Bosch was an example. He was exposed to radioactive material on a case. Ten years later, when it manifested as a form of leukemia, the city tried to look the other way because he had never filed an IOD form. Luckily, he had good doctors and a good lawyer and came out okay.

“All right,” Ballard said. “I’ll get to it before I leave. I have to hang around for the autopsy on Raffa anyway.”

“Right,” Robinson-Reynolds said. “We should talk about that. Sit down, Ballard.”

Ballard sat down in one of the chairs in front of his desk. As she did so, she noticed a small black leather pouch on the corner of the desk. It was blocked from Robinson-Reynolds’s view in his seat because of a vertical file in front of it. He must have missed it when he entered the office earlier, probably reading the overnight note as he entered.

The pouch contained Ballard’s lockpick set. She had put it down on the desk after entering the office the night before to get to the pension book. She had then forgotten it when she left. If the lieutenant found it, he would not be able to trace it back to Ballard but he would know that someone had been in his office over the holiday weekend, and she knew suspicion would likely fall on her. She was trying to think of a way to surreptitiously grab it, when Robinson-Reynolds told her she was off the Raffa case.

“Wait, what?” she asked.

“I talked to West Bureau, and they’re ready to take it off your hands,” Robinson-Reynolds said.